Watch Dogs Release Date on Wii U Delayed Again


The Watch Dogs release date on Wii U will be delayed past the May 27th release for the other platforms. While it is possible the game will still ship in 2014, the news coming from the game’s producers has many looking to a 2015 release date.

As reported earlier, the Watch Dogs release date is set for May 27th on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC. Originally intended to be a launch title for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, the game had built anticipation to a near fever pitch and for many it was the deciding factor in purchasing a next gen console. When the news broke that Watch Dogs was going to be delayed, gamers were suddenly left wondering if the purchase was still justified. Gamers who had pre-ordered the Watch Dogs bundle were suddenly left without a console. Even with all this, the game has still increased in interest and next month will let gamers everywhere decide if it was worth the wait. Except for Wii U owners who pre-ordered the game.

Anyone who has covered gaming news for longer than a console generation will tell you that Nintendo does not have the best relationship with third party publishers. EA has all but abandoned the console and the latest news about the Watch Dogs release date being up in the air is not what the console needs right now. Speaking to Polygon, senior producer of Watch Dogs Dominic Guay spoke about the Wii U versions release date:

“Yeah it’s still alive,” he said. “We still haven’t defined a ship date for it, though. So it’s on hold, to a certain extent for shipping.”

The Wii U version is not being developed by the Ubisoft Montreal team, rather the Bucharest studio is heading up much of the development for the Wii U version. The reasoning behind the release date delay for the Wii U version is not necessarily problems with the hardware, though Eurogamer has published a story on how Nintendo’s cultural vaccum has not helped it endear itself to western publishers. According to Guay the reason the Watch Dogs release date for the Wii U being delayed is because they want to explore the potential of the console.

“We have our studio in Bucharest working on it, and we wanted that team to have the time to explore the GamePad and be able to have fun with it and see how far they could push it,” he said. “It’s also an interesting platform, because it has its own strength, which we want to take advantage of, and we didn’t want to delay all the other platforms for that one. So we’re going to take the time we need to make sure the game is good (technically) when we ship it and that it also, game design-wise, makes good use of the specifics of the Wii U.”

While no one is happy in a situation where a game takes longer to develop, Ubisoft has a good track record for delaying games for good reason. Rayman Legends, originally a Wii U exclusive was delayed in order to release on other platforms and while Michael Ancel, the creator of Rayman was unhappy he later stated that it was a decision made because Ubisoft “believed” in the game. The later release date of Watch Dogs seems to have paid off in the eyes of its developers in making the versions identical in terms of features and parity.

Time will tell if the delay will ultimately hurt or help Watch Dogs for the Wii U. Ubisoft is good at making unique experiences with the hardware it is given to work with so while the release date may be further than any of us want we can hope the team in Bucharest will justify it by making Watch Dogs on the Wii U an experience worth waiting for.

Image Source: Ubisoft

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